From Kumaon

Kumaoni ghee — ‘ghyuu’ the way the hills make it

In the Kumaon hills, ghee is ‘ghyuu’ — a daily food, a ritual, a part of every home. This is the culture and craft behind our ghee.

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The short answer

Kumaon is the eastern hill region of Uttarakhand, and in the Kumauni language ghee is called ghyuu. Here it’s not a premium product — it’s everyday nourishment, made at home from curd, by hand, the way it always has been. That’s the ghee we bring you.

The region

Where Kumaon actually is

Kumaon is the eastern half of Uttarakhand — a cluster of hill districts including Pithoragarh, Almora, Nainital, Champawat and Bageshwar, each with its own dialect, food and farming rhythm. Our village, Maitoli, sits in the Berinag area of Pithoragarh district, deep in the Kumaon hills at about 5,775 ft. So “Kumaoni ghee” isn’t a flavour or a trend — it’s a specific place and a specific people. For the wider state picture see Uttarakhand ghee, and for the altitude angle, Himalayan ghee.

The culture

Ghyuu in a Kumaoni home

In Kumaon, ghyuu goes into the first dal of the day, into festival sweets, into a baby’s first khichdi, and into every ritual. It’s made in small batches from the milk of native Pahadi Badri cows — cultured into curd, hand-churned with a wooden mathani, and slow-cooked on a wood fire. Nothing about it is industrial.

📷 PHOTO NEEDED — Kumaoni home / women making ghyuu (replace this caption once the image is added)

In the kitchen

Ghyuu in everyday Kumaoni food

In Kumaoni cooking, ghyuu does quiet, essential work. A spoon over mandua (finger-millet) roti with a little jaggery is a classic — and not only for taste: the ghee helps the body digest the coarse hill grains Kumaon lives on. It is the ghyuu-and-mustard tadka that gives Kumaoni raita its signature character, and a drizzle finishes a bowl of gahat dal and rice. At festivals and weddings, ghyuu goes into the region’s beloved sweets — Almora’s famous bal mithai, and arsa, the jaggery-and-rice-flour treat fried in ghee. These aren’t garnishes; in the hills, ghyuu is part of how the food actually works. It’s the same hand-churned ghyuu we still make in Maitoli.

Our craft

From Maitoli, by hand

Our ghyuu is made in Maitoli, a Kumaoni village in Pithoragarh, by a women-led group led by Manju Bhatt. The full process and people are on the Pahadi ghee — Maitoli page; the method is explained in bilona method. Try it in classic Kumaoni-style recipes.